It seems important that we truly understand the inner self, at least as much as is possible while represented in physical form, because the reason for our being is delicately intertwined with the reason for its being. Perhaps if we understand the inner self more fully, we will grasp the intimacy we share with it and what it means to the natural development of our lives.

First of all, the inner self is highly conscious of itself, just as we are (somewhat) conscious of ourselves. The inner self is not simply an energy field that accepts input, massages the data and spits out an event or material object. It knows itself. It is a thinking, action-oriented energy gestalt with tremendous power at its fingertips, and the high intelligence to use it. It has to be pretty smart, if you think about it, to use its massive knowledge and unlimited scope of consciousness to form the physical world, not just once but on a moment-by-moment basis, over and over again, ad infinitum, in concert with all other inner selves.

According to our cosmic expert Seth, our inner selves chose physical reality as a dimension in which they would express themselves; they chose to embark upon the exciting undertaking of learning how to translate their realities into physical terms. So, they had to know how to “form and maintain the physical basis upon which all else must depend—the properties of earth that can be called natural ones.”

This suggests our inner selves have a vast reservoir of knowledge from which to draw, and Seth backs up that assumption: “There is, after the operating ego, a layer of personal subconscious material. Beneath this is racial material dealing with the species as a whole. Beneath this, undistorted and yours for the asking, is the knowledge inherent in the inner self, pertaining to reality as a whole, its laws, principles, and composition.

“Here you will find the innate knowledge concerning the creation of the camouflage universe as you know it, the mechanics involved, and much of the material I have given you. You will find the ways and means by which the inner self, existing in the climate of psychological reality, helps create the various planes of existence, constructs outer senses to project and perceive these, and the ways by which reincarnations take place within various systems. Here you will find your own answers as to how the inner self transforms energy for its own purposes, changes its form, and adopts other realities.”

Here’s the situation. For their own growth, our combined inner selves decided to create a medium called physical reality. They agreed upon the details and root assumptions of the reality they were about to form, and decided what knowledge they would need to pull it off. That knowledge then became accessible to them, so they proceeded with the plan. Part of the plan, of course, included creating personalities that could function in a physical reality, not only as human beings, but as thinking beings.

So, bodies, conscious minds, egos and subconscious minds—all direct extensions of the energy of the inner selves, formed from their ideas—were created by them and remain a part of them. In essence, our inner selves honed a way to experience physical reality, and that way included experiencing it through the expressions of each of us.

In order to keep things interesting and unpredictable—keep the excitement of their learning knife-edge sharp, as it were—our inner selves endowed us with the free will to choose the events of our lives from infinite possibilities. Our free will would keep our inner selves on their toes, you see, because they would never be able to predict for sure what we would choose to experience. But free will would need checks and balances, at times, such as when we seem to veer too far from our purpose, and find ourselves divorced from the inner knowledge of our source—i.e., in deep trouble.

At times like that, the inner self will buoy us with its support. It will still create our distorted truths for us to see, because that’s its job, but it will also form its deeper, clearer truths into physically-oriented data that will show up in our life.

On a more direct level, when our inner self is alerted to the danger of a budding event we’re creating, whatever it may be (an accident in the making, for instance), Seth says it will “immediately try to remedy the situation by an influx of self-corrective measures. On occasion, when the situation gets out of hand, (the inner self) will bypass those restrictive areas of the conscious mind, and solve the problem by shooting forth energy in other layers of activity.” That is, of course, if we don’t throw an emotional fit and demand to have our way, through the rigidity of our limiting beliefs and intent.